SIR RICHARD PENDRAGON’S STRATEGY
IT was not until we were clear of the soil of France that the
Englishman was able to shake off his resentment against King Louis,
“the pock-marked Flemish grocer,” as he dubbed him. Then it was that
in some mysterious manner his sanguine temper came again to his aid.
I cannot remember one who came near this Englishman in that power of
self-belief which renders a man in his own esteem not less than the
peer of nature.
In the lustre of his new designs he began to forget his cross in
fortune. Precisely what these were we had yet to discover; yet, as we
returned into my fair native country, it was clear that the mind of Sir
Richard Pendragon was moved by some new ambition. On several occasions
he brought his horse to a stand in order that he might proudly survey
the distant hills. And having done this he would cause them to re-echo
with his great baying laughter.
“O Dickon, Dickon!” he roared, “thou who art of the seed of that Uthyr
that was Arthur’s sire, and that was german-cousin to Giant Cormoran
that gorged upon Christian children in his Cornish fastness, what an
inveterately nimble humour thou hast, thou ruby-coloured one, with thy
lean look and thy high integrity!”
Then, having thus spoken, he would beat his thigh with his fist in such
wise as to provoke his curious beast Melanto to strive furiously to
throw him.
To the Count of Nullepart and myself the behaviour of this mad
Englishman grew ever more mysterious. Every night he declared to us
“that nothing forced the head veins like a cross in fortune.” And then
very gravely he would ask “whether the poltroonery of that French
poulter’s hare had in anywise daunted our faith in the quality of
king’s blood, because let it not be forgotten that it was borne by a
good mother’s son who walked modestly before the nations.”
For my own part, being of the northern provinces, which have the most
penetration of any district of Spain, I must confess that my faith in
Sir Richard Pendragon had been greatly impaired by the outcome of our
journey to Paris. Still, it was far from my intention to suggest this
to one who esteemed that personage so highly.
Therefore I still professed my allegiance, yet, I am afraid, in a
lukewarm manner. The Count of Nullepart, however, assured our leader,
with every appearance of gravity, that his faith in his strategy was
unshaken. Indeed, he pledged himself to embrace whatever further
courses he might devise.
Now, good reader, as you are to learn, the Count of Nullepart’s resolve
was to be tried sorely. And I, who had expressed no such confidence in
our singular commander, was also to be put grievously to the test.
It was not at once that Sir Richard Pendragon’s new design was unfolded
to us. In fact, it might be said that it was not disclosed until it
had been actually and marvellously wrought.
At first, in spite of the change in the Englishman’s demeanour, I am
bound to confess that I was very disconsolate when we returned into
Spain. It is true that Sir Richard was again as proud, sanguine, and
warlike as if he were riding at the head of ten thousand of King
Louis’s men-at-arms, yet not for an instant could I forget that he
went without attendance. I was extremely mindful of our failure, the
more particularly as the Countess Sylvia was in such sore need of the
succour we could not bring. Also I was fearful of the reception we were
like to meet with at the doomed castle of Montesina.
When I mentioned these fears to the Count of Nullepart he expressed
the conviction that all would be well. Indeed he declared that his
faith was unshaken in our incomparable leader. In this I felt that he
mocked me. Therefore I was fain to mention to Sir Richard Pendragon the
bitter pass in which we stood; whereupon he, in the strangest fashion
conceivable, stopped his horse in the middle of a hilly district, and
roared until it seemed that the whole earth was trembling with the
bolts of Jupiter.
“Why, you poor soul,” he cried, “would you suppose that we, who went
to France to procure an army, return to the young queen’s majesty with
nothing in our hands?”
“Good Sir Richard Pendragon,” said I, “in sober verity that is indeed
the case.”
“What a distemper is this, my son,” said the Englishman, “that you
should harbour such a thought? Do you not know, springald youth, that
no person of my nation ever returns from a foreign country with nothing
in his hands?”
“Good Sir Richard Pendragon,” I rejoined, “I am afraid I fail in this
instance to appreciate in what particular our hands are occupied.”
“Doubtless your own are empty, vain springald youth, because, like all
of your nation, your mind is barren.”
There was little satisfaction to be gained from such discourse as this.
If ever three servants were returning empty-handed to their mistress,
surely we were those three. And when I thought of the Castilian, who
no doubt was already besieging her castle with his great host, and
I remembered her unbending spirit, which had yet no more than three
hundred lieges to sustain it, my very dreams were poisoned as I lay
asleep, and I could have wept that we had borne such unfruitful service.
In my failure to reconcile Sir Richard Pendragon’s speeches and conduct
with the indisputable facts of the case, I was fain to consider him
unhinged, not in a few particulars, but in all. I was moved to believe
that his reverse at the hands of the French sovereign had overthrown
entirely a mind that could have never been very secure.
When we came near to the borders of Castile and made inquiry of
innkeepers and those who dwelt in market towns, our ears were assailed
with wars and the rumours thereof. And soon it became clear to us, as
we rode with all speed towards Montesina, that that which had been
predicted had come to pass. The King of Castile, said the public
voice, had moved out with a great host, was already lying before the
walls of the recalcitrant Duke of Montesina, and had sworn on the bones
of the Cid that he would not withdraw until they were razed to the
earth, and he had taken the whole of the duke’s dominion for his own
possession.
The Count of Nullepart, who, now that he was again upon Spanish
territory, had doffed his beard and resumed his charming manners,
seemed affected only to cheerfulness by these tidings. He was content,
he said, to follow in the wake of his friends, and should be curious to
learn the courses into which their strategy would lead him. Sir Richard
Pendragon also upon hearing the news was affected to pleasantness. A
smile of satisfaction spread over his countenance, and he expressed
the hope that misfortune would not wait too soon upon madam and her
defenders. I, however, had nothing of this disposition. Upon my life, I
could not see anything in these tidings save darkness and disaster. In
my view the failure of our embassy was the total failure of our hopes.
Three hundred men-at-arms would be powerless to cope with a great army,
even if they had this English giant to command them.
Indeed, at this season I was more than ever persuaded that the
Englishman was unhinged. Yet when I expressed this opinion to the Count
of Nullepart he merely laughed heartily. And if I ventured to address
any kind of remonstrance to Sir Richard Pendragon he would deride me in
such terms that I was obliged to hold my peace.
No sooner had we come into Castile, the enemy’s kingdom, than what I
was forced to regard as Sir Richard’s distemper took a more palpable
form. At a small rustic place, a three days’ journey from France,
he insisted that we should assume the guise of peasants, and should
consign our horses to the keeping of the proprietor of the local venta.
To my astonishment, he himself set the example we were to copy.
Doffing his magnificent canary-coloured doublet and all the rest of
the bedizenments he had acquired at Paris, even to the cockado in his
bonnet, he habited himself entirely in the garb of a peasant, so that,
making allowance for his bulk and his stature, I doubt whether “the
sainted lady his mother” would have known him.
By what means he had contrived such a disguise, and whence he had
obtained it we were unable to learn. In some places it was mightily
close to the skin; in others it was burst open; and further he had
sought out similar attire for the Count of Nullepart and myself.
Perhaps it were well to state that on my own part I had no intention
to submit to this unseemliness, because I could only regard the whole
matter as a distemper of the brain. Yet when, to my great surprise, I
saw the worshipful Count of Nullepart tricked out in this vulgar garb,
with his handsome face and shapely limbs emerging out of the rude
clothes of a clown, I was obliged to yield my dignity, since, whatever
the whimsicality of my companions, my youth rendered me no more than a
cadet in the service I had embraced. All the same, nothing could have
exceeded the disgust with which I doffed my fine clothes from Paris,
which were so admirably proper to the figure of a gentleman, and
exchanged them for the coarsest and most ill-fitting suit in which it
has ever been my lot to invest my person.
I was equally reluctant to part with Babieca, my honest horse. I
mentioned to my friends the distress such an act would cause me,
whereon it appeared that Sir Richard Pendragon shared these feelings in
the matter of his singular beast Melanto, and the Count of Nullepart
partook of them also in respect of his palfrey that was called
Monsieur. Therefore by the address of these two strange persons, who
certainly in this particular did not appear to be so whimsical as they
were in others, the keeper of the venta was persuaded to hold them in
his stable against the time when we should send for them again.
Doubtless it were well to state that the landlord of the venta was
hardly a free agent in regard to the horses. Sir Richard Pendragon
threatened him with such atrocious penalties if the three animals were
to go amiss within the next six months, even as to a single nail of
their shoes or a minor hair of their tails, that the cheeks of the poor
man were blanched with terror.
It was not until we had become privy to further whims of the
Englishman’s brain that we got upon our road. For early in the morning
as we were about to go forth, a cart used for the conveyance of water
was seen to be standing at the inn door. Skins hung from its sides, and
it was drawn by four sturdy mules. No water was contained in the cart,
but in lieu of it were three long poles such as are affected upon a
journey by the country people. Sir Richard gave one of these staves to
each of us, took one himself, and starting the mules upon their road,
led them out of the town in the direction of Toledo.
To all my inquiries as to what possible use there could be for an empty
water-cart and four sturdy mules I received the most unsatisfactory
answers. The Count of Nullepart still professed himself as wholly
in the hands of his commander. And he assured me solemnly that his
experience of Sir Richard Pendragon had taught him that whatever
were the actions of that singular man they were the fruits of a rare
intelligence and were greatly to be admired by those who had reverence
for the things of the mind.
As you will conceive, good reader, to this flattery Sir Richard
Pendragon--trudging through the dust and the mire with his long pole
in true peasant fashion, and wearing a great slouch hat and brass
rings in his ears, so that he looked more than ever like a robber,
and continually exhorting his four mules with barbarous oaths--gave
an assent that was most ready and gracious. He took occasion to pay
the Count of Nullepart a compliment of his own upon the power of his
philosophy and his old-fashioned respect for high intelligence, “the
which he was sore to observe in these days did not always obtain with
springald youth.” And the courteous gravity with which this English
barbarian assured the Count of Nullepart that he loved him for his
liberal opinions made me furious.
For could anything have been more unseemly than that we three persons
of birth and high breeding--in such a description Sir Richard Pendragon
is included by courtesy--should be pursuing the highways of Spain
in the company of a water-cart drawn by four mules and wearing the
rudest attire to be seen out of Galicia. Yet, as we moved through
the unfrequented country places at the rate of one league an hour,
there were some advantages at least to be taken from this fashion of
progress. We needed not to keep a watch for robbers, since they were
not likely to trouble three peasants who themselves had the appearance
of bandits. Neither had we need to fear falling in with the army
of Castile, because none could have discerned that three prominent
servants of the King’s enemy were hidden in such wretched guise. Again,
neither was there to be suspected in the homely and rustical figure of
a water-carrier the accomplished robber of churches.
Although such immunity seemed a high price to pay, for its penalties
still remained many and grievous, it presently began to appear that
some kind of a design was lurking in it. For in the course of a week’s
painful journeying, and as we moved slowly from place to place, I
seemed to discern that our leader was not so much unhinged as I had
feared.
Howbeit, to all my searching after that which lay in his mind, he would
only answer me with a droll mockery which he seemed greatly to relish.
Still, ever to allow a due to the devil, as we came nearer to Toledo he
showed no lack of that soldierly vigilance that always distinguished
him when he took the road. He was very precise and yet very cunning as
to the inquiries he made in regard to the disposition of the forces of
Castile.
We proceeded very warily as we approached the scene of King John’s
campaign; and thereby contrived to glean some information of what was
toward. All who have seen the famous castle of Montesina will not need
to be told that it is perhaps in the most invincible situation of any
fortress in Spain, for it stands upon a high and impregnable rock.
Although it was well known to the Countess Sylvia’s ruthless foe that
at this time she had no more than three hundred men-at-arms with which
to defend it, and that the duke, her father, was afflicted with years,
he yet deemed it wiser to gain his will by what in the language of war
is called a siege, rather than to win the fortress by open assault
at the point of the sword. The Castilian was a crafty prince and a
covetous.
It was no small satisfaction to Sir Richard Pendragon to learn that
King John, instead of enforcing the garrison, was content to invest
the castle of Montesina; and in order to starve it into surrender had
sat down before its walls. Yet it is no more than just to the King to
mention that before taking this course he had already made one assault
upon the rock, and had been repulsed with the loss of an hundred men.
This we learned as one night we unharnessed our mules at a posada, less
than a day’s journey from Toledo. Scarce had Sir Richard Pendragon
received this information than he beat his stave on the water-cart
and vowed that high heaven was smiling upon our enterprise. Indeed he
declared that the victory was already in our hands. It was vain for
me to seek an interpretation of this dark saying; yet by now I was
determined to accept all that was urged by this formidable character,
whom I had come to regard either as one of the wildest hare-brains of
the age or one of its foremost intelligences.